Practical skeptic readings in sociology pdf

V The Promise

C. Wright Mills "The Promise," published in 1959 by C. Wright Mills, is probably the most famous essay ever written by a modern sociologist. In this article, Mills cap- tures the essential lesson of sociology: To truly understand people's behav- ior, we must look beyond those individuals to the larger social contexts in which they live. Individuals make choices, to be sure, but their choices are constrained by social, historical, cultural, political, and economic factors. Most important, people frequently do not even realize the extent to which their lives are affected by things that are external to them and outside of their control. Mills's point is that if we are to understand people's behavior, we must take into account these nonindividual factors. (This is not an espe- cially easy article to read, but it is fundamental. You might find it helpful to read the section on Mills in The Practical Skeptic: Core Concepts in Sociology, chapter 2, before you tackle this reading.)

Nowadays men often feel that their private lives are a series of traps. They sense that within their everyday worlds, they cannot overcome their troubles, and in this feeling, they are often quite correct: What ordinary men are directly aware of and what they try to do are bounded by the private orbits in which they live; their vi- sions and their powers are limited to the close- up scenes of job, family, neighborhood; in other milieux1 they move vicariously and remain spectators. And the more aware they become, however vaguely, of ambitions and of threats which transcend their immediate locales, the more trapped they seem to feel.

1Milieux is French; it means "social environments." (Milieux is plural; milieu is singular.)—Ed. "The Promise" from Sociological Imagination by C. Wright Mills. Copyright © 1959, 2000 by Oxford University Press, Inc. Used by permission of Oxford University Press, Inc.

Underlying this sense of being trapped are seemingly impersonal changes in the very structure of continent-wide societies. The facts of contemporary history are also facts about the success and the failure of individ- ual men and women. When a society is in- dustrialized, a peasant becomes a worker; a feudal lord is liquidated or becomes a busi- nessman. When classes rise or fall, a man is employed or unemployed; when the rate of investment goes up or down, a man takes new heart or goes broke. When wars happen, an insurance salesman becomes a rocket launcher; a store clerk, a radar man; a wife lives alone; a child grows up without a father. Neither the life of an individual nor the his- tory of a society can be understood without understanding both.

Yet men do not usually define the troubles they endure in terms of historical change and

From McIntyre, Lisa. 2014. *The Practical Skeptic: Core Concepts and Readings in Sociology*, pp. 1-7. McGraw-Hill.
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institutional contradiction.- The well-being they enjov, they do not usually impute to the big ups and downs of the societies in which they live. Seldom aware of the intricate con- nection between the patterns of their own lives and the course of world history, ordinary men do not usually know what this connec- tion means for the kinds of men they are be- coming and for the kinds of history-making in which they might take part. They do not pos- sess the quality of mind essential to grasp the interplay of man and society, of biography and history, of self and world. They cannot cope with their personal troubles in such ways as to control the structural transformations that usu- ally lie behind them.

Surely it is no wonder. In what period have n been so totally exposed at so fast

a pace to such earthquakes of change? That Americans have not known such catastrophic changes as have the men and women of other societies is due to historical facts that are now quicklv becoming "merely history." The history that now affects every man is world history. Within this scene and this period, in the course of a single generation, one sixth of mankind is transformed from all that is feudal and back-

-MilU 5 the term institution in its sociological sense — . h is a bit different from the way this term is used in every-

day or conventional speech. To the sociologist, institution refers to .; -. I of social arrangements, an accepted way of resolving important social problems. Thus, the institution of the family is our - ay of resolving the important social problem of raising children. The institution of the economy is how we re- solve the problem of distributing goods and services (for ex- ample, in the case of the United States, capitalism). The con-

l ' cept of institutional contradiction refers to situations in which the demands of one institution are not compatible with the de- mands of another institution. For example, there is institu- tional contradiction when the institution of the family is based on the norm that dad goes to work and mom stays home with the kids but the institution of the economy is such that it takes two employed adults to support a family. You will find more examples of institutional contradictions in reading 2 by Stephanie Coontz. You can read more about the nature of in- stitutions in The Practical Skeptic: Core Concepts in Sociology, chapter 9, "Society and Social Institutions." —Ed.

ward into all that is modern, advanced, and fearful. Political colonies are freed; new and less visible forms of imperialism installed. Rev- olutions occur; men feel the intimate grip of new kinds of authority- Totalitarian societies rise, and are smashed to bits — or succeed fabu- lously. After two centuries of ascendancy, capi- talism is shown up as only one way to make society into an industrial apparatus. After two centuries of hope, even formal democracy is re- stricted to a quite small portion of mankind. Everywhere in the underdeveloped world, ancient ways of life are broken up and vague expectations become urgent demands. Every- where in the overdeveloped world, the means of authority and of violence become total in scope and bureaucratic in form. Humanity it- self now lies before us, the super-nation at ei- ther pole concentrating its most coordinated and massive efforts upon the preparation of World War Three.

The very shaping of history now outpaces the ability of men to orient themselves in ac- cordance with cherished values. And which values? Even when they do not panic, men often sense that older ways of feeling and thinking have collapsed and that newer be- ginnings are ambiguous to the point of moral stasis. Is it any wonder that ordinary men feel they cannot cope with the larger worlds with which they are so suddenly confronted? That they cannot understand the meaning of their epoch for their own lives? That —in defense of selfhood — they become morally insensible, trying to remain altogether private men? Is it any wonder that they come to be possessed by a sense of the trap?

It is not only information that they need — in this Age of Fact, information often domi- nates their attention and overwhelms their ca- pacities to assimilate it. It is not only the skills of reason that they need — although their struggles to acquire these often exhaust their limited moral energy.

The

What they need, and what they feel they need, is a quality of mind that will help them to use information and to develop reason in order to achieve lucid summations of what is going on in the world and of what may be happening within themselves. It is this qual- ity, I am going to contend, that journalists and scholars, artists and publics, scientists and editors are coming to expect of what may be called the sociological imagination.

1 The sociological imagination enables its pos- sessor to understand the larger historical scene in terms of its meaning for the inner life and the external career of a variety of individuals. It en- ables him to take into account how individuals, in the welter of their daily experience, often be- come falsely conscious of their social positions. Within that welter, the framework of modern society is sought, and within that framework the psychologies of a variety of men and women are formulated. By such means the per- sonal uneasiness of individuals is focused upon explicit troubles and the indifference of publics is transformed into involvement with public issues.

The first fruit of this imagination — and the first lesson of the social science that embodies it—is the idea that the individual can under- stand his own experience and gauge his own fate only by locating himself within his period, that he can know his own chances in life only by becoming aware of those of all individuals in his circumstances. In many ways it is a terri- ble lesson; in many ways a magnificent one. We do not know the limits of man's capacities for supreme effort or willing degradation, for agony or glee, for pleasurable brutality or the sweetness of reason. But in our time we have come to know that the limits of "human na- ture" are frighteningly broad. We have come to know that every individual lives, from one

generation to the next, in some SOCK-: lives out a biography, and that he b r a it out within some historical sequence. Bv the fact i his living he contributes, however minul the shaping of this society and to the course of its history, even as he is made bv society and by its historical push and shove.

The sociological imagination enables us to grasp history and biography and the relations between the two within society. That is its task and its promise. . . . And it is the signal of what is best in contemporary studies of man and society.

No social study that does not come back to the problems of biography, of history and of their intersections within a society has com- pleted its intellectual journey. Whatever the specific problems of the classic social analysts, however limited or however broad the fea- tures of social reality they have examined, those who have been imaginatively aware of the promise of their work have consistently asked three sorts of questions:

1. What is the structure of this particular society as a whole? What are its essen- tial components, and how are they re- lated to one another? How does it differ from other varieties of social order? Within it, what is the meaning of any particular feature for its continuance and for its change?

2. Where does this society stand in human history? What are the mechanics by which it is changing? What is its place within and its meaning for the develop- ment of humanity as a whole? How does any particular feature we are ex- amining affect, and how is it affected by, the historical period in which it moves? And this period — what are its essential features? How does it differ from other periods? What are its characteristic ways of history-making?

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3. What varieties of men and women now prevail in this society and in this pe- riod? And what varieties are coming to prevail? In what ways are they selected and formed, liberated and repressed, made sensitive and blunted? What kinds of "human nature" are revealed in the conduct and character we observe in this society in this period? And what is the meaning for "human nature" of each and every feature of the society we are examining?

Whether the point of interest is a great power state or a minor literary mood, a family, a prison, a creed — these are the kinds of ques- tions the best social analysts have asked. They are the intellectual pivots of classic studies of man in society — and they are the questions in- evitably raised by any mind possessing the so- ciological imagination. For that imagination is the capacity to shift from one perspective to another —from the political to the psychologi- cal; from examination of a single family to comparative assessment of the national bud- gets of the world; from the theological school to the military establishment; from considera- tions of an oil industry to studies of contempo- rary poetry. It is the capacity to range from the most impersonal and remote transformations to the most intimate features of the human self—and to see the relations between the two. Back of its use there is always the urge to know the social and historical meaning of the individual in the society and in the period in which he has his quality and his being.

That, in brief, is why it is by means of the sociological imagination that men now hope to grasp what is going on in the world, and to understand what is happening in themselves as minute points of the intersections of biog- raphy and history within society. In large part, contemporary man's self-conscious view, of himself as at least an outsider, if not a permanent stranger, rests upon an absorbed

realization of social relativity and of the trans- formative power of history. The sociological imagination is the most fruitful form of this self-consciousness. Bv its use men whose men- talities have swept only a series of limited or- bits often come to feel as if suddenly awakened in a house with which thev had only supposed themselves to be familiar. Correctly or incor- rectly, they often come to feel that they can now provide themselves with adequate summa- tions, cohesive assessments, comprehensive ori- entations. Older decisions that once appeared sound now seem to them products of a mind unaccountably dense. Their capacity for aston- ishment is made lively again. They acquire a new way of thinking, they experience a trans- valuation of values; in a word, by their reflec- tion and by their sensibility, they realize the cultural meaning of the social sciences.

Perhaps the most fruitful distinction with which the sociological imagination works is between "the personal troubles of milieu" and "the public issues of social structure." This distinction is an essential tool of the sociologi- cal imagination and a feature of all classic work in social science.

- Troubles occur within the character of the in- dividual and within the range of his immedi- ate relations with others; they have to do with his self and with those limited areas of social life of which he is directly and personally aware. Accordingly, the statement and the res- olution of troubles properly lie within the indi- vidual as a biological entity and within the scope of his immediate milieu — the social set- ting that is directly open to his personal expe- rience and to some extent his willful activity. A trouble is a private matter: values cherished by an individual are felt by him to be threatened.

Issues have to do with matters that transcend these local environments of the individual and the range of his inner life. They have to do with

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the organization of many such milieux into the institutions of an historical society as a whole, with the ways in which various milieux over- lap and interpenetrate to form the larger struc- ture of social and historical life. An issue is a public matter: some value cherished by publics is felt to be threatened. Often there is a debate about what that value really is and about what it is that really threatens it. This debate is often without focus if only because it is the very na- ture of an issue, unlike even widespread trou- ble, that it cannot very well be defined in terms of the immediate and everyday environments of ordinary men. An issue, in fact, often in- volves a crisis in institutional arrangements, and often too it involves what Marxists call "contradictions" or "antagonisms."

In these terms, consider unemployment. When, in a city of 100,000, only one man is un- employed, that is his personal trouble, and for its relief we properly look to the character of the man, his skills, and his immediate oppor- tunities. But when in a nation of 50 million employees, 15 million men are unemployed, that is an issue, and we may not hope to find its solution within the range of opportunities open to any one individual. The very struc- ture of opportunities has collapsed. Both the correct statement of the problem and the range of possible solutions require us to con- sider the economic and political institutions of the society, and not merely the personal situa- tion and character of a scatter of individuals.

Consider war. The personal problem of war, when it occurs, may be how to survive it or how to die in it with honor; how to make money out of it; how to climb into the higher safety of the military apparatus; or how to contribute to the war's termination. In short, according to one's values, to find a set of mi- lieux and within it to survive the war or make one's death in it meaningful. But the struc- tural issues of war have to do with its causes; with what types of men it throws up into command; with its effects upon economic and

political, family and religious mstrtutwnv i the unorganized irresponsibility o t a i n nation-states.

Consider marriage. Inside a marrug man and a woman may experience person troubles, but when the divorce rate during t first four years of marriage is 250 ou t , 1,000 attempts, this is an indication of a struc- tural issue having to do with the institurio of marriage and the family and other institu- tions that bear upon them.

Or consider the metropolis — the horrible, beautiful, ugly, magnificent sprawl of the great city. For many upper-class people, the personal solution to "the problem of the city" is to have an apartment with private garage under it in the heart of the city, and forty miles out, a house by Henry Hill, garden by Garrett Eckbo, on a hundred acres of private land. In these two con- trolled environments —with a small staff at each end and a private helicopter connection —most people could solve many of the problems of personal milieux caused by the facts of the city. But all this, however splendid, does not solve the public issues that the structural fact of the city poses. What should be done with this won- derful monstrosity? Break it all up into scat- tered units, combining residence and work? Re- furbish it as it stands? Or, after evacuation, dynamite it and build new cities according to new plans in new places? What should those plans be? And who is to decide and to accom- plish whatever choice is made? These are struc- tural issues; to confront them and to solve them requires us to consider political and economic issues that affect innumerable milieux.

In so far as an economy is so arranged that slumps occur, the problem of unemployment becomes incapable of personal solution. In so far as war is inherent in the nation-state sys- tem and in the uneven industrialization of the world, the ordinary individual in his restricted milieu will be powerless —with or without psychiatric aid —to solve the troubles this sys- tem or lack of system imposes upon him. In so

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far as the family as an institution turns women into darling little slaves and men into their chief providers and unweaned dependents, the problem of a satisfactorv marriage remains incapable of purelv private solution. In so far as the overdeveloped megalopolis and the overde- veloped automobile are built-in features of the overdeveloped societv, the issues of urban liv- ing will not be solved bv personal ingenuity and private wealth.

What we experience in various and spe- cific milieux, I have noted, is often caused by

structural changes. Accordingly, to understand the changes of many personal milieux we are required to look beyond them. And the num- ber and variety of such structural changes in- crease as the institutions within which we live become more embracing and more intricately connected with one another. To be aware of the idea of social structure and to use it with sensibility is to be capable of tracing such link- ages among a great variety of milieux. To be able to do that is to possess the sociological imagination. . . .

Questions

1. What is the sociological imagination? (You might begin with quoting Mills's definition, but try to describe this phenomenon in your own words as well.)

2. In brief, what kinds of questions are asked by those who possess a sociological imagination?

What are "personal troubles of milieu"? What are "public issues of social structure"? Why does Mills say that the distinction be- tween troubles and issues is "an essential tool of the sociological imagination"?